The invention relates to toilets having a portion (e.g. particularly part of a siphon trap) installed behind a room wall.
In many bathrooms space is a valuable commodity. When a bath, a toilet, and a vanity are all placed in a conventionally sized bathroom, most of the floor space is quickly used up.
Typically, toilets have had a footprint defined by the space needed to accommodate the bowl/seat, a water storage tank, and a trapway extending from the bowl. In particular, conventional trapways extend up from the bottom of the bowl to a weir, then down via a siphon formation leg, and then typically transversely to a sewer outlet. This takes up a considerable portion of the needed footprint for a toilet.
The trapway serves multiple purposes including trapping sewer gas by formation of a water seal, retaining water in the bowl prior to flushing, and assisting in the formation of a siphon during the flush cycle. The shape of the trapway can be critical to performance of the toilet in terms of cleaning ability and water use.
There have been some attempts to minimize the footprint of a toilet in a bathroom by forming convoluted trapways which do not go as far rearward as conventional trapways. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 381,660 and 502,452. However, this type of construction of the trapway creates inefficiencies and complicates production.
Others have attempted to place a portion of the trapway behind the room wall so that less of the toilet extends into the room to take up room space. See e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,878,483, 3,271,793 and 6,415,457. However, such in-wall trapways have not taken optimal advantage of the space behind the room wall, and have created their own inefficiencies in operation.
Hence, a need exists for toilets which reduce the room footprint thereof in an efficient manner while still providing equal or better performance over conventional wash down toilets.